


but, loved by the sun

by capo (gliss)



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gliss/pseuds/capo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the kind of sunburn that can be prevented, but it is the kind that can be healed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but, loved by the sun

~

 

 

 

If you spend too much time lingering under an open sky, trying to swallow molten starlight, Rin learned, eventually, the light will turn against you. Eventually you’ll wind up with lightning branded against the lines of your throat and a thunderstorm in your head, clouds in your eyes and rain in your heart.

Thing was, Rin didn’t linger. He’d learned not to, back when he was thirteen and playing with candle flames, when he was fourteen and placing distrustful hands on a lit stove, when he was fifteen and thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong, insignificant as he was standing out in a meadow when the sky was brawling, only to find that self-fulfilling prophecies were real things, that electric shocks did hurt. That somewhere down the line he’d learned to brace himself for the worst with his teeth bared and knives in his hands. And somewhere down the line he’d learned to use the knives for attack instead of defense, throwing sharp cuts into faces with bright blue eyes and chapped lips scratched from over-use of the word “senpai”.

And then somewhere down the line Tachibana Makoto burned away the weapons in his hands and Haruka refashioned them into shields, gleaming with promise. Somewhere down the line the two of them took him and made him battle-ready again, strong and fast and _alive_ , Achilles remade with the colors of wine, while Nagisa kept him mortal, Rei kept him human.

Here’s the problem they didn’t foresee: if you spend too much time as a human, sometimes you think you are a god.

And sometimes gods have regrets.

 

 

At the beginning it was easy.

Makoto was good at things like starting a conversation, starting a joke, starting a story, a romance.

Rin was once even better, dragging together haphazard boys to form a relay team, but after Australia, he outgrew the ability; now it was Haruka, transferring abruptly into Samezuka right before the start of their third year, who proclaimed a desire to swim again along with what Rin thought was a weird, obsessive lust for their beautiful indoor pool. Now it was Haruka who pulled together a relay team and told Nagisa that Makoto had given Iwatobi a great start, the best they could have asked for, so it was up to him to make things even better. Now it was Haruka who issued a challenge now and then, who quirked up his lip told Rin that his degree of entry was off.

But it was Makoto who drew him to the edges of the pool after practice was over, who sighed into his mouth and carded his fingers through his hair, so at the end of the day, Rin thought that he’d definitely won that sort of race.

Makoto knew terrifying things, like when to smile without laughing and when to laugh politely and when to change the subject. He knew things like which shoulder hurt more after training and where to kiss and how to say goodnight and thank you. More importantly, he knew how to say things like “it’s okay” and “I love you”.

He said them a lot.

After the high faded away, after weeks spent linking pinkies together on the beach and not caring about the sea salt in their hair, Rin slipped over an unexpected obstacle in the road and went skidding back down like a landslide. The problem wasn’t Makoto disappearing. The problem was that Makoto burned too hot along the back of his neck, not knowing his own strength (or maybe doubting it).

What Makoto needed to learn was how to be more human, too, a human counterpart to Rin with a human smile and a human laugh and human tears and human fears. Because right now he was Rin’s sun and the light for his moon; he was Rin’s earth and sea and sky; he was the drift of clouds across both the real sky above and their reflections rippling across the horizon line. He was perfect and surreal and so far away, too far away, high and clean and so _above_ the rest of the world. And Rin needed him to be Makoto, the boy who hesitated in the middle of a raging ocean, the boy who leapt behind Haru’s back in the face of a darkened lighthouse, the boy who wasn’t perfect enough to trust in the strength of others but will someday learn to.

Rin loved the perfect version of Makoto but he hated him too.

Makoto’s constant concern for him became a brand on his skin and a peeling along his spine, and somewhere down the line, he should have seen this coming.

 

 

Before crashing back down to earth, Rin read, Icarus had a moment of glory when his wings spanned the curve of the earth and his joy split the limits of humanity in two.

 

 

For the first time, Rin recognized what was happening to him while it was still going on.

For the first time since the summer heat rose, tipping all of them into the shallow water at the beach, heavy layers of waterproof sunscreen gleaming against their shoulders, Rin and Makoto found themselves splayed across the sand, their shoulders touching, shielding their eyes from the sunset with a free hand.

There were moments like these when Makoto looked like the entire universe smiled at him, and Rin had to squint to make out the light plastering itself against the borders of his profile, his strong chin and Adam’s apple and enticing collar bones. Moments when he wanted to touch all over Makoto’s body just to make sure he was real. He glanced around the beach; it was empty, so he rolled onto his elbow and did just that. He tasted like sunscreen and sand and sea, left something suspiciously grainy in Rin’s mouth, but Rin didn’t care.

It had been a really long time since they’d had this time, anyway, this tiny spot in the world just to themselves where Makoto’s mouth was just the right amount of gentle and tender and -

dammit, he was just so far gone, and he loved Makoto so much.

“How was it,” Rin heard himself asking eventually, when Makoto’s head fell back into the beach towel again, his lips swollen with traded kisses and his eyes vaguely aimed at a pocket of air up above, even though he already knew the answer. “Your cram school session?”

“Good,” Makoto replied absently, his eyes still searching for who knows what in the sky. They looked a little strained, and Rin thought about telling him to just relax and close them, but words like that never rose easily to his tongue, so he didn’t. “Better, now that it’s over and I can concentrate more on schoolwork, and transitioning Nagisa for next year.”

“Do you always have so much to do?”

“Well, yeah,” and Makoto laughed a tiny bit, just enough to offset the hidden weight in Rin’s question. Like always, it was a weight Rin himself didn’t feel until after it had been alleviated. “Anyone with younger siblings does, I guess. Isn’t it the same for you and Kou?”

Rin shifted to stare at Makoto, bits of sand falling out of his hair. “She’s always been able to take care of herself better than I can. I meant like… outside your family. With school and stuff.”

It was a stupid question. Rin  had a habit of asking stupid questions and, as he’d come to discover, Makoto had a habit of trying to recover for him. Of course Makoto had that much to do, considering his position as swim team captain and class rep and apparently a part-time music theory teacher at the store in town in a bid to earn some pocket money (“so I can spoil my boyfriend when I want to,” he’d told a madly blushing Rin).

“It’s okay,” Makoto answered, selfless as always, a waive of an apology that never happened. “I don’t mind.”

The prickling in Rin’s spine warned him of something during the quiet that followed. He thought that the wind sounded different when the sun was setting.

Makoto said, “I like doing things for people. For you.”

 

 

Vaguely and then achingly, Rin wondered when Makoto had become something he accepted instead of someone he cherished.

 

 

Between the joy and the crashing, Rin read, there was a moment of disbelief when the hot wax peeled away not only Icarus’s skin but every last hope of survival clinging to his brain.

He threw the book across the room and thought, _fuck you, Rei, I’m never borrowing books from you again._

 

 

“Don’t you ever get _tired_ , Makoto?” Rin asked.

Makoto took a moment to come up with an answer, which was exactly how long it took for Rin’s good mood to bubble away like sea foam.

“I’m tired right now,” Makoto admitted, closing his eyes, allowing Rin a first glance at the imperfect boy he really was. Rin reached to brush his fingers through Makoto’s hair, but before he could move, Makoto added, “but I can’t really _stop_ , so, it’s okay.”

“... fucking hell, Makoto.”

Somehow he’d picked up Makoto’s habit of tacking on people’s names at the end of his sentences. He wondered what else he’d picked up from him. Hopefully the good habits, like the nice smile, the easy politeness.

Makoto’s smile came out tired, too. “It’s okay,” he repeated for the thousandth time, reminding Rin of the only time they’d talked about that night at training camp, the first time Rin felt like he could take care of someone. Makoto said “it’s okay” hundreds of times that night, right before Rin’s hand came up into his hair and they crashed together, _finally_ , beating hearts crushed too close for either of them to care, their kisses all hard and knocking and over-heated.

That Makoto disappeared so quickly, though, leaving Rin with nothing but this perfect blazing shell, burning too brightly to let anyone guess at its translucence, burning away his wings.

Sending him crashing into the sea, too fast to be saved.

 

 

It’s up to you, Rin read, to decide if the ups were worth the downs. If the pain of sunburn was worth the blaze of happiness on your face.

 

 

Samezuka carried itself to nationals that year, and it was every bit as amazing as Rin had imagined, gold medals hanging hot against his chest. One for the 100m butterfly, one for the 100m freestyle, a bronze for the medley relay.

The Iwatobi club was there, too, roaring in the stands along wit the rest of the crowd. Rin caught the bright proud gleam from Haru’s eyes, dark hair tapering off into the popped collar on a new Samezuka jacket; he caught a sobbing _Rin-chan-!_ from Nagisa and a barrelling hug; he was handed a thick _Rin-chan-san_ from Rei, choked with emotion, _that was -- that was beautiful_ ; he received --

Makoto was quieter while the rest of them were there, but later, he caught Rin in the locker room and later still they snuck into the back of Mikoshiba’s car and lost themselves to euphoria.

Rin couldn’t forget the hard look on Makoto’s face between harder kisses, how Makoto got this still, concentrated glaze in his eye as he fucked into him; couldn’t forget his own voice gasping out _fuck fuck fuck Makoto fuck, I love you, I love you I love you I love you_ and how he came because he couldn’t help it, the feeling of Makoto everywhere at once, hot and thick and _wanting_.

Later on, he snuck them into Samezuka for the after party and kissed Makoto with his mouth full of liquor; both their mouths, really, trading fire for fire, victory sprinting down their throats.

 

.

“... no, Tachibana’s okay,” someone said, their voice blurred into anonymity by the alcohol and the flashing lights and the in-between darkness, “but I can’t believe Matsuoka’s still hanging out with the rest of those losers --”

Rin jerked backwards as if he’d been shot through.

“Rin?”

Light from the hallway flooded onto Makoto’s face but the rest of him stayed shadowed, making all the worried lines on his face stand out starkly from the rest of the room.

“Yeah,” Rin said, his voice high. “I’m here. I should, I should get back, I have -- I have a study session with Ai tomorrow so I shouldn’t drink that much, sorry, Makoto.”

(Weeks, months from now, Rin would realize that when he really did apologize, Makoto didn’t say something as stupid as “it’s okay.”)

“Oh, sure, let me walk you back,” Makoto offered.

“No, you should take Nagisa home safely, I can walk just fine. See,” and Rin managed an impressively steady, if slow walk towards the door, feeling Makoto’s eyes trained on his back.

“You sure?” Makoto asked again, although he looked around worriedly for Nagisa.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” Rin promised, feeling a sharp, sharp pang in his stomach. Cold sweat broke out onto his forehead suddenly and he suddenly thought that Makoto was too bright, blindingly bright, too close and too far away, like all the atoms of his being were rushing in and out of focus, if that was even possible. Doppler effect atoms. Mikoshiba would like that sort of thought. Nitori, too. Fucking science fanatics. He was trying to think of other things, but all he heard was _those losers_ , the scoff tipping out afterwards and hooking around his ankle, tugging him sharply into the past, throwing him off his carefully balanced happiness. “I’ll text you when you get home, too. I mean. You’ll text me when you get home too, right?”

“Rin,” Makoto repeated again, “are you okay?”

 _I called you a loser why do you even want to be here_.

Rin straightened and frowned. “Just get the fuck out of here,” he snapped. “Oi, Nagisa. Rei.”

“Rin,” said Makoto again, like he was about to forget that name forever.

“I’ll text you,” like those were the only words he wanted to believe.

 

 

It was cold in their room, since both he and Nitori liked to drape all sorts of blankets (and people, too, given the opportunity) over themselves, but this time Rin let himself freeze in his thin sleeping clothes, staring numbly at the light from his phone screen.

His breath fluttered what felt like every other second, every time he stared at Makoto’s name on their text log.

 _I’m home_.

_Great, me too. Good night, Rin._

He’d always thought Makoto was too good to be real, lingering just out of the spectrum of reality.

He felt like he’d swallowed lightning, like a storm churned in his stomach, like thunder clapped right around his head. Like every natural disaster in the world had settled somewhere in his body, ripping apart everything he’d worked so hard to build and rebuild. Like the only being in the world that could calm him was Makoto, but also like there was another solution just around the corner. His thumb hovered over the green call button for long minutes before he growled and let his phone thump into his mattress.

“Dammit,” he whispered.

The more he wanted Makoto here, the more he realized that he didn’t.

He didn’t want Makoto to see him like this yet another night, wrecked and sullen with his face pressed deep enough into the pillow to suffocate. Nights like this happened too often, strung across calendar days like Christmas lights, where Rin felt _unfairly_ human, rocketing towards unforgiving earth and praying that Makoto wouldn’t let him crash, where Rin had doubts that Makoto would suddenly remember every last thing Rin had ever done to hurt him and decide to just leave,

and really, what was stopping him --

 _really_?

He had his back to the door when Nitori slipped out of his bunk to wander sleepily towards it in order to make use of the water fountain down the hall; they didn’t talk, for once, even though he _knew_ Nitori had heard him shifting restlessly against his sheets, breath coming out like they’d been pushed out of him against his will.

He didn’t know when Nitori had become so astute, either, and it made him feel about a hundred times worse.

The edge of his mattress dipped slightly when Nitori came back and used it as a stepping stone to climb directly onto his bunk on top. Or so he thought.

 

 

“Rin,” said Makoto, his voice so full and soft with understanding that it cracked.

 

 

Ri-in.

“I’m sorry,” said Makoto, more confident in apologizing than he was in saying Rin’s goddamned _name_ , what the fuck did that even mean? He laid a hand tentatively on Rin’s arm and it burned, so he yanked his arm away.

“Why are you sorry,” he sighed, tired.

“I’m sorry. I… I don’t know, I felt like I should apologize.”

“Why the _fuck_ are you sorry -- why are _you_ the sorry one when I called you a _fucking loser and abandoned you more times than you can count_ , why are you _sorry_?” Rin burst out, his words bouncing off the wall and striking Makoto across the face. “Why are you even here?”

“I was going to apologize but --”

“No, why are you even _here_?”

“You looked like you weren’t feeling so grea--”

“Aren’t you tired? It’s three in the fucking morning, you smell like Nagisa threw up on you, or is that why you’re here? Because you can’t let Ren and Ran smell the alcohol on you because you have to be so fucking _perfect_ for them, and when it comes down to it you’re going to choose them over me?”

“Rin, what are you talking about?”

“You don’t love me,” Rin accused, brittle. “You just need to take care of me you just have to prove to yourself that you can take care of people ever since your goldfish died, _again_ , Jesus Christ, Makoto can’t you tell the difference between animals and humans?”

“I do love you,” Makoto whispered. He sounded terrified, _terrified_ when he shouldn’t be. “Of course I do.”

“Then why don’t you _trust me_? Why do you have to be so perfect all the time,” Rin pressed on. “Why can’t you let people take care of you? What the fuck is wrong with you, Makoto, you’re an eighteen year old high school student, right?”

“Last time I let someone take care of me was when I almost drowned in the ocean,” Makoto said tersely. “There’s no way I can stress out the people I care about like that, I…”

“You drowned because you were trying to take care of someone. And fuck you for bringing that up again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Goddammit will you stop fucking apologizing!” Rin yelled, sitting up so fast that his head collided with the top bunk, sending a spray of stars across his vision. The pain was sudden, but not entirely surprising, but Rin swore anyway. “Fuck!”

“Are you okay?” Makoto asked, unnecessarily because Rin curled up, his chin resting in the crevice between his knees, biting his lip so hard that spots of red traced themselves across his teeth when he let up. “Oh my God, Rin, stop, _stop_.”

“Why are you so calm?” Rin demanded, his voice shaking dangerously, but he kept talking while Makoto looked around wildly for tissues. “Why do you want to be around a disaster like me?”

For a long moment, Makoto stared at him.

“Because I don’t feel like I have to run away from you.”

Makoto located the tissues among the wreck on Nitori’s desk, went into the bathroom to dampen it with water, and came back to start wiping gingerly at the blood on Rin’s mouth. Rin didn’t even know his mouth was so dry until the cool, damp wad of tissues touched on his bottom lip, a hundred times different from the soft warmth of Makoto’s lips but somehow still gentle and tender. And somehow, pressing harder than Makoto probably thought he was. It was a touch he hadn’t sensed until today, panting against the car seat. Makoto probably always had this touch, and maybe Rin was too caught up in his idea of perfection to notice it.

“I’m not that perfect, Rin,” Makoto told him gently, after a long bout of silence.

“I know that,” Rin said, petulant.

“I guess I didn’t want an excuse to be able to back out of… of this. I thought… I thought I was doing what made the most sense.” The dabbing at his lip stopped. Rin watched as Makoto tossed the tissue in the direction of the trash can, missing it by a few inches, as he laughed reflexively. “See? I was afraid I would do something dumb like that you wouldn’t want me around anymore, since I’m such a --”

And he stopped.

“Such a loser,” Rin finished softly.

Makoto opened his mouth to apologize, probably, so naturally, Rin tipped forward to kiss him even though his mouth was still sore and the sudden pressure caused the bleeding to start up again. He didn’t care when the salty taste got all over their tongues, either; he just wanted to keep kissing Makoto for every time he’d inadvertently hurt him. And one day they’ll go down the list, Rin hanging his guilt out on a clothesline under a cloudy sky, Makoto folding them up one by one and tucking them away into the ground, too deep to be reached; Rin will cry and Makoto will look apologetic even though it should be the other way around; they’ll kiss each other more then, hard and soft and heavy and light, quick kisses and lingering ones, ones that mean forgiveness and ones that mean forgiveness is coming. But they’ll do it together, both of them, until Rin has enough space for just the happy things from his past: a blue trophy, a picture with Haru glaring into the camera, his first pair of swimming goggles, graduation pictures, Syndey’s opera house standing white and brilliant in the background, his first letter from Gou that she sent all by herself.

For now Rin was content to just grow back together, hands joining to bridge whatever gap had formed in the middle. For now the soft pressure of Makoto’s lips against his was enough, a promise that they were okay, were going to be okay.

“You don’t have to be perfect to stay,” Rin told him, finally. “I love losers like you. I love you because you’re such a loser. You can feel free to do dumb things around me all the time, I promise. I can’t be the only dumb one in this relationship.”

“... you got your blood in my mouth, so I think it’s safe to say you’re the loser in this situation,” Makoto pointed out, a curious expression on his face, a tiny green bud that will eventually become a smile.

“Don’t tell me you have a blood fetish.”

“I swear I don’t.”

 

 

“Hey, Makoto.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorr--”

“It’s okay, Rin.”

 

 

Makoto’s breathing was not as even as Rin had always thought it was, but it adjusted to his own just fine. It was nice to lie there and breath against each other, heartbeats slow, tension melting away.

 

 

“... where did Ai go off to?”

“He went into the room across the hall, said he was pretty good friends with Mikoshiba’s old roommate.”

“On the track team?”

“Well, yeah, they’re on the track team together, now.”

“Oh.” A pause. “ _OH_.”

“Wow, Rin.”

“Shut up.”

“How much of a loser would I be if I said ‘make me’...?”

“Oh my God, that’s awful. Where did you even hear that one?”

“From the cellphone novels you downloaded a month ago.”

“Fuck.”

 

 

If you weather the storm, Rin learned, the first burst of sunshine will be enchanting. The air will be heavy with life and golden with promise, strung on a raindrop necklace. Eventually the clouds will turn silver-gold and then white again, clean and clear, and the sky will rinse itself back into blue.

 

 

There were days when the past still snowballed on him from behind quicker than Makoto’s fleeting kiss and sent him sprawling into the floor, hitting the tiles with his chin and feeling the reverberations shatter across his fragile construction of stability, breaking into bruises that revealed the razor-sharp bones underneath. There were days spent digging a grave in his own bed or creating red, red not-artwork across the expanse of Makoto’s back, placing perforated cuts along the lines of his bottom lip, failure heavier than Makoto’s warm weight on his chest.

Afterwards Rin picked himself up and haphazardly sewed up the gashes of hurt left in Makoto’s side and drank enough hot tea to cauterize his own wounds. He liked to watch Makoto lying still in his bed, his hair all messy, catching the glimpse of forest green visible through the curtains, eyes closed and breathing so steady. Afterwards, loose and warm and lit from within, Rin felt like he could do anything.

He felt like he could fly into the sun and swim in the sky, like he could freeze the reflections of dawn into something solid; he felt like he could erupt out of the water quicker than any dolphin and snatch a medal out of the air; he felt like he could hear his father sometimes, the words _proud_ and _of you_ rolling together into a tidal wave of euphoria. But none of that added up to the feeling that he could stretch Makoto’s smile just an extra beat longer, squeeze laughter out of an already-aching stomach for another second, set flames of excitement across strong cheekbones.

In those moments Rin soared, and fully believed that he’ll continue to soar, racing up with wings lighter than air --

and Makoto, learning that he could soar, too, that flying was impossible if he was too caught up in the safety of the ground to take a leap of faith, fingers knit tightly in his own, an imperfect human boy who was barely just so --

 

This is not the kind of sunburn that can be prevented, but it is the kind that can be healed.

**Author's Note:**

> you can thank [Ad_Astra](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ad_Astra/pseuds/Ad_Astra) for this 8D  
> and as usual, thanks to my awesome beta z
> 
>  
> 
> also, canon changes explained:  
> \- nitori stopped swimming and became his own person and kicked ass at cross country  
> \- haruka eventually goes olympic with rin. i really think haruka has the potential to love competitive swimming depending on how it's pitched to him  
> \- makoto's part-time job evolves into something cooler when he becomes an adult


End file.
